Meta Settles with Texas for $1.4 Billion Over Unauthorized Biometric Data Use

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations involving the unauthorized capture and use of personal biometric data of Texas residents. This settlement, announced by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday, marks the largest ever obtained from an action brought by a single state and the largest privacy settlement ever secured by an attorney general.

In February 2022, Texas filed a lawsuit against Meta, accusing the social media giant of unlawfully capturing the biometric data of millions of Texans without their informed consent, which Paxton argued was a violation of Texas law. According to Paxton, Meta’s data collection practices breached the state’s Biometric Identifier Act and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

The controversy centers around a feature introduced by Meta in 2011 called tag suggestions. This feature, which became a default setting for all Texans without proper explanation, used software to capture facial geometry from photographs uploaded to Facebook. The press release from the Attorney General’s office stated, “[F]or more than a decade Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted.”

Under the terms of the final order, Meta will pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over the course of five years. This settlement comes as Texas has forecasted “aggressive enforcement” of its upcoming data privacy law. In June, the state announced the formation of a dedicated team to oversee the implementation of this law, which will also support the enforcement of the Biometric Identifier and Deceptive Trade Practices Acts.

This is not the first time Meta has faced legal challenges over its biometric data practices. In January 2020, Facebook settled a class-action lawsuit in Illinois for $550 million, which alleged violations of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act due to similar data privacy concerns involving the tag suggestions feature.

In response to the settlement, a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers.”

By fLEXI tEAM